Generally, the number of users requiring the remote health care is increasing in the past few years. The remote health care systems use a variety of health care devices to continuously monitor the user in a non-invasive manner. But these types of health care devices are not portable and restricted to one geographical area.
Emergency health crises that require immediate attention have been a difficult problem to address regardless of the age of the person encountering a medical emergency situation. Conventionally, the panic button type devices interlink the user to the emergency response team via landline or mobile telephone. If the user is suddenly disabled during a sudden health crisis, such as in a heart attack or a serious fall situation, the panic-button type devices become useless. Further more if the person is able to press the button the person should be within the effective wireless transmission distance to the device that dials the telephone to report the emergency. The panic button type devices are not effective for the users when the users are in unconscious state or rendered incapacitated by a fall or other medical condition. Furthermore no vital information on the user's status like heart rate, blood pressure, breath rate, body temperature, oxygen level and the like will be transmitted to the response team to provide further medical assistance. Consequently, it is difficult for the response team to diagnose and provide treatment to the user.
Typically, the health monitoring systems should have an adjustable emergency alert level throughout a day for different levels of activity. The capacity to determine the location of the person, who requires immediate medical assistance, should be more effective, accurate and relevant to provide proper medical assistance. The global positioning systems (GPS) determine the location of the user when signals from multiple GPS satellites are received by the system. The GPS system fails to determine the location of the user when signals are not received from, more than one satellite due to shielding by buildings or geographic features or improper antenna orientation. The conventional GPS tracking systems comprises multiple integrated circuit chips. Consequently the multiple integrated circuit chips consume more power compared to the single integrated circuit chips with the combined capabilities of the individual integrated circuit chips. Furthermore the conventional GPS receivers can determine the location of the user only when there is clear view of the sky within several feet of the GPS receiver's antenna.
Typically, many health care facilities perform the vital sign monitoring of the user only once in a week due to the time and money needed to perform these operations. If the user's vital signs are checked only once hi a week, the declining health condition of the user is detected after the health condition is worsened. Furthermore this is eliminating the opportunity for early intervention. The user's physiological parameters such as pulse rate, heart beat rate, electrocardiogram (EKG), blood pressure, breathing rate, body temperature and the like should be measured and monitored continuously. Further the measured parameters and the location of the user should be transmitted to the central monitoring system to continuously monitor the physiological parameters of the user while simultaneously tracking the location of the user.
In light of the aforementioned limitations, there clearly exists a need for user wearable portable communication device for monitoring, receiving and analyzing the physiological parameters related to the user for providing remote health care services by communicating with a remote health care monitoring center through a communication network by receiving the location of the user through the communication network for providing emergency medical services.